The 80's

[Puddle]

The 80s...they were simple for me. of course i was 11 when they ended. i actually still remember that New Years day 1990 came around.

It was simple obviously because i was a kid, and there wasn't much junk in the way (by junk i mean computers, internet, cable, video games other than Atari, cell phones).

I had a sister 8 years older so i was pretty familiar with the music of the 80s. including the Smiths but not to mention other bands she loved (Aha, Duran Duran, etc).

Other than that. there was casey kasem, Reagan making another speech in the oval office, gorbachev with a tattoo of alaska on his forehead, a pope in a cool car, swatch watches (first with rubber swatch guards and then the plastic oval guards), nonsense hair styles, the Lost Boys, various causes broadcasted live on tv (Live Aid, Hands Across America), GI JOE, MacGyver, Smurfs, and various other things that only pertain to me--so i think.

What's to hate? It's impossible to hate at an age of 8.

shit. i hope al those things i listed actually happened in the 1980s. oh, and i also did a killer Simon Le Bon (my sister was so evil)

 

[Mad Vespa]

Student Unions in the eighties were the dog's. You could go out with a tenner in your pocket and still afford a kebab before heading for the night bus.

And Thatcher? I hope she dies a long slow death.

 

[Worm]

Does music always have to be political to be meaningful? Why can't it simply be pleasurable to listen to or dance to? Sometimes I like listening to meaningless shit.

I agree with you. I was answering the question from the standpoint of someone who lived through that decade speaking to someone who hadn't. Looking back at all the great stuff that came out of the Eighties, it's tempting to ask, "What was so bad about it?" And like Mark Simpson and others, it's my opinion that all the great art from that period stood against everything else those years embodied: politics, culture, religion, etc. As Morrissey said of James Dean, "He who was so unlike the decade of the 50's had come to symbolise it". People forget what it was like: it sucked.

To answer your first question, no, music doesn't have to be political to be meaningful. It can just be pleasurable. But then again, everything's political. So, for example, Morrissey appearing on Top Of The Pops in 1984 with flowers and Levi's and a hearing aid-- I don't think people who weren't alive (or were too young) in 1984 can appreciate how different that was. (I only came to The Smiths a few years later, but I do vividly remember '84-- yuck.) Is a gesture as simple as wearing tattered jeans political? All things considered, well-- sort of, yes! You'd have to be alive for years before that TOTP moment, living through every day of the Eighties, only to turn on your TV and see that arresting sight to appreciate it fully. So there are lots of ways to be political. I didn't mean for my definition to sound so narrow.

What I really meant is that all these bands were going against the grain, whether it was explicitly or merely in who they were, so that when people talk about the Eighties, it's not just one monolithic slab of history. It's not simply good or bad. There was a mainstream, and there was a counter-movement, and the counter-movement was, like, totally awesome.

I don't see any counter-movement today, and the reason why is that the mainstream has become so much more effective at disarming and scattering opposition. In the Eighties, there really was an "underground" scene, whether it was punk or just New Wave, or rap or techno. And if you were in those camps you were genuinely apart from everything else around you. AFI might be a cool band, but I don't see how they even come close to being as daring and independent as their influences.

No, the mainstream accommodates AFI much more easily and skillfully than it did twenty years ago with Fugazi or The Cure. Perhaps it was teenage naivete, but when I first got into The Smiths, it seemed like someone was throwing a giant wrench in the machinery. People who did not like or even know about The Smiths didn't know what to do with them, especially in America. You'd literally stop people in their tracks if you wanted to dangle some of Morrissey's eccentricities in front of their noses. The machine would stop-- maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, but it would stop. The machine's a lot different now; the machine resembles the wood-chipper in "Fargo".

Like I said, I don't think it's all bad. Listeners and artists are more enlightened, there's no doubt about that. I like the way music's borders have vanished. People aren't hung up on bullshit the way they used to be. There's an incredible cross-pollinization going on, and it's cool. Seeing and hearing so many more interesting artists in the mainstream makes life a smidgen more interesting. But what have we lost? Years ago there was a funny Consolidated record which pointed out that there was no mainstream versus underground, just big trends and smaller trends: we were all trendies, so let's drop the holier-than-thou pretences. Okay. Well, in the Eighties, there were huge trends and then tons of smaller trends, and the distance between the two was vast. Now it seems there are far fewer trends and the distance is much, much smaller. In comparison to the Eighties, forces opposing the great surge of mass culture are harder to find, and the ones that exist aren't doing a whole lot.

This partly explains the bluntness factor-- why The Dixie Chicks really stepped out in a way that was more daring than many of their contemporaries, and had to do so by standing on a stage in London and declaring they didn't like Bush, or, recently, saying they didn't care about country music radio anymore. Did anyone do anything but stifle a yawn when Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young or Eminem made their bold statements against the war and/or Bush? Or, moving away from politics, look at the reaction to Madonna recently-- her "risque" stage show-- who cares? She could have jammed a rubber crucifix up her backside, and it's just "Madge will be Madge. Naughty girl!"

I'm not a Chicks fan, mind you, I'm just interested in them because their story is a good barometer for the times we're living in. It seems like all you can do in 2006 is get up and say, "f*** you, you're evil, I want to see you dead". This also sheds some light on why Morrissey himself has become so much cruder in his political statements. To get anyone's attention you have to drop the irony, grab a megaphone, and make blunt, nakedly angry statements like the Chicks or Morrissey or Kanye West or whoever. Whereas in 1984, you were sending shockwaves through the system by wearing Levi's, tossing flowers, extolling vegetarianism...

 

[Dupree]

I was talking to someone at work yesterday about what it would be like to live in the 80's and she said 'It was just like now but with out the wants...phones, ipods, that lot'.

When my Dad speaks about the 80's (he's 39) it always sounds kinda fun and care free. His stories revolve around being at the front of Depeche Mode concerts, walking from Millbrook to Totton to the pub and to get stringy chips then being sick on the bridge on the way home (I'm guessing that doesn't mean much unless you know the area), jumping off said bridge (something I'd never, ever do because of years and years of being told it's 'too dangerous'), stealing bikes and selling vegetables that had fallen off the back of a lorry. There seems to be something quite alluring to pratting about in an era with less abbreviations (DVD/MP3/MSN/HI-FI/CD etc). Sometimes it feels like texting and the internet has made it really easy to not bother with people...back in the day if I wanted to talk to my friends I'd just go round but now it's like 'meh, I'll text 'em. They'll probably be on msn tonight anyway' and unfortunately it seems like most of my peers are in the same frame of mind.

With regard to what Tex was talking about earlier as well about becoming interested in bands, now it's like, 'Joe said so-and-so were good' slap 'em into Google and up pops a wealth of information. All good of course, nothing like broadening one's musical taste but sometimes I think 'getting in to' something the old fashioned way sounds cool. You know, gathering up all the little tidbits of information you find and really working at it.

I suppose I have a very awry view though mainly made up from the nostalgia of others and the curiosity for a time other than now. I mean, in twenty years time when I am my Dad's age I will probably be telling my kid/s all about the halcyon days when we didn't have microchips under our skin and how those of us without iTunes would manually rip a CD (shock horror) and put the songs onto our mp3 players and possibly saying 'when I was your age Bob Geldof was some washed up new wave singer turned media saint...if you told me then he'd be president of the world, I'd have laughed in your face'. Well, maybe not the last one.

 

[Worm]

With regard to what Tex was talking about earlier as well about becoming interested in bands, now it's like, 'Joe said so-and-so were good' slap 'em into Google and up pops a wealth of information. All good of course, nothing like broadening one's musical taste but sometimes I think 'getting in to' something the old fashioned way sounds cool. You know, gathering up all the little tidbits of information you find and really working at it.

Completely true. I've had the same observation.

I suppose I have a very awry view though mainly made up from the nostalgia of others and the curiosity for a time other than now. I mean, in twenty years time when I am my Dad's age I will probably be telling my kid/s all about the halcyon days when we didn't have microchips under our skin and how those of us without iTunes would manually rip a CD (shock horror) and put the songs onto our mp3 players and possibly saying 'when I was your age Bob Geldof was some washed up new wave singer turned media saint...if you told me then he'd be president of the world, I'd have laughed in your face'. Well, maybe not the last one.

Again, completely true. Unquestionably there's an element of the tired old saw "back in my day things were better...". Over time the world improves in some ways and gets worse in others, and often our satisfaction in knowing that "younger people don't have it as good" is countered by the unpleasant fact that our age shuts us out of many of the improvements they enjoy. I've been loitering on the web this morning, and I spent an hour watching YouTube videos. An outlet like YouTube was unthinkable when I was a teenager. It's amazing. It's also beyond me: I would never, ever make a video. But I liked some of the videos I saw and I can see how it might be cooler-- in that regard, anyway-- to be young today.

Still, I think you can look at history and get some sense of how certain parts stood in relation to the whole, something which is especially important if you value art (like rock and roll) that in one way or another tries to disrupt orthodoxies. If you want to read a fine example of this, pick up a copy of George Orwell's essay "Inside The Whale", which compares Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" with James Joyce's "Ulysses", measuring them against the political climate of the 20s and 30s.

I'll leave the last words to Philip Larkin:

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's f***ing her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives -
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and all that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

1967

 

[mauve21]

David Bowie still putting out good stuff in the 80s if I remember correctily it was the Ashes to Ashes album, which to me was the last one I really loved , Iggy Pop was putting out good stuff too, and of course it was the advent of The Smiths, there was also Echo and the Bunnyment, eternal Nick Cave, um I can't remember it all seems so long ago now.......

 

[The Cat's Mother]

I blame the perms!

Isn't that awful? Although I notice my beach-bling is back in fashion this year.

Even more creepily, I recall hubby's band playing support for Billy Bragg at a miners' strike benefit and there being people sneaking around photographing not the acts, but the audience. I'm probably on a govt. file somewhere. Troubled times

 

[Aly Panic]

I felt quite sad at the end of the 80's but the 90's kicked in and they were soon forgotten!
I suppose I was too young to appreciate the 80's but the 90's were far better, you had Baggy/Madchester/New Wave of New Wave/Britpop!